Meet Eddi
It was 9 pm on July 21, 2021, when my phone buzzed with an urgent call from a fellow wildlife carer. An echidna needed rescuing after a harrowing ordeal on the road. The poor little creature had been hit by a 4WD, and before the driver could safely remove it, a passing truck clipped the echidna again. Though shaken, the driver sought help, but no one had the facilities to care for the echidna overnight. So I offered to help..
With a secure, large enclosure at my property, I thought I was prepared for the task—what I hadn’t accounted for was their feet. Echidnas have incredibly powerful digging claws, and catching them requires patience. It took three of us nearly two hours to gently coax the echidna into a box. It wasn’t just Eddi’s sharp spines that made the task a challenge—echidnas can dig and anchor themselves into the ground in this case the wire on bottom, with incredible strength, making them nearly immovable.
A trip to the vet the next day revealed a minor hairline fracture on Eddi’s "beak," though technically, it’s a long snout equipped with electroreceptors to detect prey like ants and termites. The injury wasn’t severe, so we debated the best way to proceed. The vet suggested rehabilitation in my joey enclosure, reasoning that if Eddi was strong enough to dig out, she was ready to leave. That assumption turned out to be very accurate.
Eddi spent her first few days hiding under a low shelf in the shack. I left food and water nearby, and she ate in secret, I never really saw her again. Three days later, I discovered an impressive tunnel—Eddi had dug straight through the shack and under the fence! I followed her trail and continued putting food out for a few days, but Eddi was gone for good, likely back to her wild home.
Echidnas are truly fascinating creatures. Did you know they have no teeth and use their 15-centimeter-long sticky tongues to catch prey? They are also expert diggers, which serves as both a defense mechanism and a survival tool. With powerful claws and compact bodies, they can burrow into the ground in seconds, making them incredibly difficult to catch (as I learned firsthand). Echidnas are monotremes, egg-laying mammals. The only other living monotreme is the platypus. A female usually lays one egg at a time. The egg goes into a pouch on her stomach to incubate. After seven to 10 days, the egg is ready to hatch. When it hatches, a baby echidna, called a puggle, is about half an inch (12 millimeters) long and weighs 0.02 ounces or about half a gram. The puggle stays in its mother's pouch for another six to eight weeks, which give its spines time to harden.
Puggle drink their mother's milk until they are about seven months old. They don't suckle on nipples, though. The mother secretes milk through glands and the baby laps up the milk.
Eddi’s escape was both bittersweet and remarkable. Though I never got to see where she went, I was thrilled to be part of her journey and in knowing she had the strength and spirit to return to her natural habitat. For anyone lucky enough to encounter an echidna, remember to admire from a safe distance, and if they’re in trouble, seek help from professionals—they’re resourceful survivors, but even they sometimes need a hand.
